


you have her face and her eyes, but you are not her

by sunflashes



Category: Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, in which there is angst and an adopted baby girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 09:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflashes/pseuds/sunflashes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Her name is Grace and she’s the most beautiful little thing Bruce has ever seen, even though his stomach clenches hard around the thought of how easily he could press his fingers into the soft spot on the back of her head, even in his own body.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	you have her face and her eyes, but you are not her

**Author's Note:**

> This is for my wonderful Captain America, who came up with the idea of Bruce and Tony's young daughter looking at a just-un-Hulked Bruce from outside a glass cage. Oh, the angst. I had to run with it.
> 
> Also MEL I HAVE FINALLY WRITTEN AVENGERS FIC

Her name is Grace and she’s the most beautiful little thing Bruce has ever seen, even though his stomach clenches hard around the thought of how easily he could press his fingers into the soft spot on the back of her head, even in his own body. She is baby-bird fragile and Bruce lets Tony hold her, in fact, he insists on it. 

“She’s so light,” Tony murmurs, transfixed by the sweet little creature in his arms. He rocks her back and forth gently. “She’s so light and fragile but she’s ours and I think I’ve never loved anything like this before,” Tony looks up at Bruce as he says it, eyes wet, and Bruce feels something within him ache like a forest fire, a place that even the farthest reaches of green has never touched. 

“I,” Bruce tries, but ends up just wrapping his traitorous, shaking arms around Tony’s waist and looking over his shoulder at their daughter’s soft, downy hair. Her tiny bow of a mouth. Her eyelashes; spidery-thin and fluttering. 

\---

And there are all these things that Bruce would actually rather have pulled from underneath his fingernails than tell Tony, all these things that are just. So essentially relevant but so utterly mortifying and horrible and they make it sound like he doesn’t have any faith in Tony at all. He’s spent the last few years building up trust and trying, trying so hard to give himself over to Tony completely, to believe in him, to believe in them. But now that Grace is real (they signed the papers three days ago), there are nightmares, green-tinted nightmares in which he crushes the heads of baby birds beneath his fingertips without realizing it, in which he drowns in green and loses every last facet of himself, every last scrap of Bruce Banner (that this has happened before is the most terrifying part), and kills. And kills. And kills. 

\---

There are mornings where Bruce emerges from the bedroom and Tony has actually successfully managed to make waffles and he’s cutting them into little pieces for a teething, smiling, bubbly Grace and Bruce leans against the doorframe and bites back _you don’t deserve this._

\---

“Tony,” Bruce almost says one day when they’re spread out on Tony’s bed with Grace sleeping between them, making gurgling noises as though laughing at something in the sweet expanse of her dreams. “I can’t,” he almost lets himself say. “This isn’t safe. I’m not safe. For you or for her.” But he doesn’t. Because the way he and Tony are bracketed around Grace, vigilant parentheticals, surrounding her, protecting her, and then the way Tony looks at him makes words dry to dust in his mouth. 

He doesn’t want his daughter living with a hurricane always brewing, _you can’t see daddy today, he’s a little green_ , it’s just not. Anything. It’s not anything Tony deserves, regardless of the fact that he knew exactly what he was walking into. And Grace, beautiful little malleable angel Grace, who couldn’t know, who deserves princess dresses and tea parties and a college education and deserves both parents coming to see her in the school play and at her graduation and deserves four hands to push her on the swingset, one in front and one in back and Bruce waits until Tony falls into a soft, tender sleep before gingerly rising from the bed. 

He goes to his closet and drags out a suitcase that he never thought he would have to use again. 

He makes it through packing and out into the living room, but stops to write a note and leave his cell phone on the table. 

_Dear Tony_ he starts, and can’t make it past there, because _and Grace_ is what’s coming next, but you can’t stop an avalanche once it's already hit you and he is paralyzed by quiet sobbing. 

\---

The next morning, Tony is making pancakes and Bruce leans against the doorframe and says “you don’t deserve this,” says “Grace doesn’t deserve this.” 

Tony blinks, the pancakes are burning at the edges. 

“And I don’t deserve you.”

\---

Once he’s said it, it gets easier. Tony snarks and coos and makes faces for Grace, but when Grace can’t see, he kisses Bruce like he’s drowning, holds him like he knows he left a pair of shoes in that suitcase, tells him fiercely over and over again that he loves him, that he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t want this, that Bruce is worth it. 

Bruce lets him, lets him, lets him, and feels worse every day because he can’t believe that.

But he can believe in Grace, even though he is tightrope-walking and playing with every sort of fire, he loves her, loves her like a forest fire, loves her like she’s the answer to everything, the center of his world, he gives himself over, as much of himself as he controls, anyway, and she is his everything. 

Grace giggles and grows and tastes new things and takes her first few shaky steps and Bruce holds his breath. 

\---

There is a lull. A nightmareless lull in which Grace needs a bed instead of a crib and is reading paragraphs instead of the normal standard of sentences and is bright, inquisitive; a wind-whipped, sunburnt, green-eyed, blonde siren on the playground. She is three and doesn’t know quite what “Avengers” are yet, and that is beautiful in its own simplicity. 

Grace is in school and Tony smiles easily at Bruce, takes his hand, and they talk about everything. They talk about the tooth fairy and Santa Claus and the Easter bunny and superheroes and JARVIS, who they turned off when they brought Grace home. They talk about her fourth birthday, which is coming up, and how she wants a princess tea party theme, and Tony looks at Bruce in this sort of hard, bright way and maybe Bruce should have seen this coming and says

“She loves you more than anything. And so do I.” 

And maybe, just maybe, Bruce lets himself believe it. Just for a few seconds. He lets himself entertain the notion that they can keep doing this, that it won’t end in disaster, because even the worst hurricanes have that center of calm. 

\---

It is four-year-old Grace, sitting on the kitchen counter in an orange sundress, that pushes the button on the blender while Bruce’s hand is in it. 

He runs, clutching his hand and stumbling, in a green haze of pain and surprise and sick, hot anger, and Tony pulls Grace to him, horrified, and Bruce is sobbing as he locks himself in the room they built together just for this, this room he’s never had to use before. 

His muscles shift and ripple and stretch and he isn’t roaring, he keeps on crying as he changes, and he manages to make it inside the glass cage before the Hulk fully takes over and Bruce is drowning, spiraling helplessly, no longer in possession of his own consciousness. 

Hours later, Bruce jolts awake from a nightmare in which he destroyed a grand, opulent ballroom with tables set for tea. He is still in the glass cage, all smooth edges and foothold resistance, and he sits up, holding his pounding head. 

It’s then that he sees Tony and Grace sitting in front of the glass cage. 

Tony looks _exhausted_ , weary beyond his years, circles dark and hollow beneath his eyes, and Grace looks overjoyed. 

She walks up to the glass in front of where Bruce sits, presses her hand to it, and says brightly, sweetly, 

“Daddy! You were green, just like my eyes.” 

And finally, suddenly, shockingly, he believes what Tony’s been telling him all along.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and inspiration from _Bells for Her_ by Tori Amos.


End file.
